The Meta

Testing load balancers

Testing load balancers in your network means finding out how they function in all of these scenarios.

In theory, load balancers can be tested with actual clients sending requests to actual back-end servers, but in practice this is not a sound approach. The volume of clients and servers required to generate a load sufficient to tax many load balancers would make the use of real clients and servers unfeasible both logistically and economically. Even if the client/server infrastructure were available, a method would have to be developed to generate traffic and collect the accurate performance statistics.

Recognising these challenges, a number of vendors have developed testing tools that implement both the client and server elements needed to test load balancers. These tools can emulate the data streams that would emanate from clients and servers. Because they are purpose-built to generate traffic, they can usually generate the high loads required to stress load balancers. They are also designed with repeatable workloads, which is necessary to make performance comparisons across devices.